Jason Feifer
speaker
848 appearances
6 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 12 Jun
Jason Feifer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
That time has been the time of greatest accomplishment in my life. I have built the most during that time. So even as I focus on all the things that I couldn't do, I've also done the most. And why is that? I mean, part of that is just like, if you're doing life correctly, then there should always be new things and you're growing.
But another part of it is that I think that just having the kid forced me to put structures around my time in a way that I never had before and to be really intentional about how I'm using my time and to drop things that I enjoyed, but that just weren't as productive a use of my time. And as a result, my work has thrived. And that sounds like what you're setting up here.
I had no idea. That was amazing. I got a lot of emails. Did I tell you that? I got a lot of emails from that episode. People were really grateful about how honest I was about the challenges of parenthood. In fact, I was just talking with a friend who lives in Montana, and I was being open about how challenging I find parenting is.
And she was shocked because she was like, nobody in Montana would ever say something like that. And I do think it's true that in more work oriented cultures like New York, where I live, there's probably a bit more comfort with talking like that. But mostly people are not comfortable talking about it. But I think I think that it's really important.
Like, you know, it'll be important for you as you'll find out, like parenting will be very rewarding, but also you're going to wipe a lot of asses and you're not going to enjoy any of that. It's OK not to enjoy any of that. Thanks, Jason.
So... Well, if we rewind to the times in which we were having kids nine years ago and five and a half years ago, I, in both cases, was fully employed. Today, I have a job. A W-2 employee. if not 100% of my income, 90% of my income. That's not the case now. Now, I still have a W-2, but I also have a whole lot of entrepreneurial pursuits and make more outside than inside the company.
But back then, it was just that. So I had just a regular paternity leave of, I can't remember how much it was. It wasn't that much, a couple of weeks. And then my wife, Jen, is... She is self-employed, but as a freelancer. So she's really like eating what she kills. It's just like project to project to project to project. And it was interesting. Jen had more thoughts and feelings on this.
And her thoughts and feelings were that for her, work is this dual source of purpose and deep anxiety. Right. And she is always thinking about... I mean, she drives a lot of value... from her work, and she loves her work, and it's a place of passion for her. But also, she's always thinking about what's coming next, and will this project lead to another project? Am I at the end of my career?
Jen's always thinking this way. She'll write a book, and then it'll be like, ugh, is this the last book that I ever get to write? Is this the last article that I ever get to write? So there's a lot of anxiety. So she... saw maternity leave as a opportunity to take a break from that, to just say, I have another thing to focus on, a bigger, like kind of weightier, I don't know, whatever.
It's a more important thing. It's an actual human being. Yeah, it's an actual human being. So she was really hoping that that project of taking a break and just focusing on raising a child could eliminate some of the anxiety that she was feeling about work and just give her a break from it.
And I think that it did in the actual break, the actual few weeks that she gave herself for quote-unquote maternity leave, it certainly did not in the long run. She still has all that work anxiety even though we have our children. But she really loved that and I think wanted to find... a moment to recalibrate from it.
Me, on the other hand, honestly, what I did is that I used my paternity leave both times to just do other work projects. I remember I was working on a podcast five and a half years ago, a solo podcast project. And I spent basically my entire paternity leave at home when I was not helping out with the baby, just working on that thing because I don't really know how to stop.
And I don't know what else I would do with my time.
The beginning, the very beginning is the, it's the easiest time. I mean, you will like the, the, it's really real. The hardest part is sleeping because the baby will be waking you up constantly, but yeah, baby's just, baby's not doing much. It doesn't really require that much of your work. Like you're going to sit around and be bored.
Like I have a feeling that you will, it'll be very interesting to see what you do. Do you find other things to do? Like, like Jen, um, really committed to watching a bunch of trashy TV and just checking out and just enjoying being on a break. Whereas I didn't. I don't know how to do that. So I just worked on something else that wasn't my work.
I wonder what you were going to do when you would just have like, you have permission to have a break right now, Nicole. You have permission to have a break.
Right. Can I tell you that as we were talking, I was just flashing back to this moment. This to me was the, I don't know, maybe I've shared this with you before. I can't remember. So tell me if not. When I think back on this moment of transition from not having children to having children and just like an awareness moment for me, I don't know. I don't know how to categorize this thing.
I'll just tell you what it is, which is that I remember... Nine years ago, Jen is pregnant with her first boy. And she is like you. She's just like, couldn't be more pregnant. You know, like we were we were who knows. We were hours to days away from from the whole thing going. And we were sitting on our living room floor. And I don't know what we were doing.
Maybe we were playing a game or something. I don't know what we were doing. And it occurred to me, and so what I said to her was, I said, everyone always says, after having children for a long time, you sort of can't remember life without them. Just because your life is just so different. It's like, what did I do with all my time? You sort of forget. And I said, we are living right now
at the very end of before times. The rest of our life will be divided by this moment. Life is divided by all sorts of moments, but a big one is this one. Like BK, before kids. Yeah, it literally is BK or Burger King. And so I was just like, we are at the end of the before times. And it's a strange... I didn't know what to do with that thought, but I liked being aware of it.
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